Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
(N/A)
COLUMBIA,MO 65211
Performing Department
Human Environmental Sciences
Non Technical Summary
This project will combine expertise in elementary science education and sustainable architecture to develop, pilot, and evaluate a green building literacy curriculum for the fifth grade science classroom. This curriculum will increase students' environmental literacy by helping them build connections between Earth systems (biosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere) and built infrastructure (with an emphasis on green buildings). This interdisciplinary approach is unique in that it will use the physical school building - and surrounding community - to amplify science education. The project will advance the evidence base for a pedagogical tool called "model-based reasoning," an emerging but understudied technique in science education. Model-based reasoning employs iterative modelling exercises to help students evolve their understanding of complex systems. This technique is ideal for teaching complex themes such as energy, where human-built infrastructure has a layered and reciprocal relationship with all four of the major Earth systems. The funding sought here will aid efforts to develop curriculum, pilot select lesson plans, and then evaluate those lessons with a mixed-methods research project (survey, student drawings, and interviews). The project thus makes a theoretical contribution to science education while offering an evidence-based curriculum for educators that aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This project is a stepping stone toward a fully integrated green infrastructure curriculum (that includes themes such as energy, water, materials, etc.) where we will seek funding through the NSF Discovery Research K-12 program. Our long-term goal is to create an "Interdisciplinary Center for Green Building Literacy" that achieves national reputation for MU as a leader in science education through green building design and research.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The overarching goal of this research is to create and evaluate a green building education curriculum that advances eco-literacy for elementary school students. Within the broader concept of eco-literacy, we will focus our efforts on energy literacy and water literacy within the built environment. Future work will expand to include additional themes at the intersection of buildings and ecology (such as materials, landscape design, or air quality), however we do not anticipate addressing more than two major themes over the next five years.Specific objectives within the 5-year timeframe of this proposal include:Objective 1: Understand current context: Conduct exploratory pilot project research to examine how and if green infrastructure (and specifically the topic of green buildings) is being addressed in the elementary school classroom within the Columbia Public School system.Objective 2: Develop first two units of curriculum: Work with educators in Central Missouri public schools to develop the following units for the elementary science classroom:2a: Energy Literacy in Buildings Unit2b: Water Literacy in Buildings UnitObjective 3: Implement & Evaluate first two units of curriculum: Implement our lesson plans in at least 2-4 different school sites in Central Missouri (a mixture of urban and rural schools) and evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum.
Project Methods
We will work with a mixture of urban and rural schools in Central Missouri. We will search for schools both with and without access to a green building and work with the 5th grade educators in each school. One of our known research sites has a unique condition where one class of 5th graders is in a green building and the other class is not. This selection of schools will allow for several comparison groups when we begin to evaluate the effectiveness of our curriculum: 1) Within School: Students who attend the same school where half of the population has science class in a green building and the other half in a conventional classroom, and 2) Between Schools: Students who do and don't have a green building on their school campus. Given these research sites, once the curriculum is developed, we propose to do a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design (Gall et al., 2003) to explore how the newly developed curriculum and the learning environment (access to green features on campus) affect 5th-grade students' development of energy literacy. This design allows for control and test conditions when random assignment of individual participants is not possible, as is often the case with classroom-based research.The phases below indicate the multi-step process we will use for each major curriculum we design.Figure 1. Theoretical framework for energy literacy for green infrastructure through model-based reasoningPhase I: Curriculum Development. The first phase will involve collaborative curriculum development between elementary educators and the research team. We will engage two fifth-grade educators at each school. We will draw upon contemporary theories of curriculum development and student learning (e.g., Krajcik, McNeill, & Reiser, 2007) and our theoretical framework (Figure 1) to design educational units that align with the NGSS [Next Generation Science Standards]. The units will support students in using model-based reasoning to understanding how infrastructure and Earth System Science (ESS) are interrelated. We plan for curriculum development to take a year per unit, as it requires locating all related science education standards, identifying appropriate content and activities that support student learning, and aligning with our theoretical framework (Figure 1) (Krajcik et al., 2007). Figure 2 illustrates how our energy curriculum, for example, could progress from themes of "Energy & Ecology" and "Alternative Energy Sources" to a series of lessons on the built environment that go from city infrastructure through to building interiors. The lessons will be hands-on and involve site visits to community energy projects and buildings.Phase II: Piloting Curriculum. We will pilot lesson plans for each the energy literacy and water literacy units. The researchers will work with educators to pilot and implement units as they are developed, and implementation will take place in Elementary school classrooms across contexts.Phase III: Evaluating Pilot Lesson Plans. To examine how the curriculum supports students in acquiring eco-literacy through model-based reasoning, we plan to collect multiple pieces of data from students and teachers. The variety of data will afford opportunities for data triangulation, thus bolstering efforts to validate claims using evidence from multiple sources. Our multiple sources of data are:Pre/Post Survey: We will adapt the "Green Building Literacy Survey" (Cole, 2013) used in our pilot study and administer this survey at the beginning and end of the school year with all students across all schools in the study.Pre/Post Student Drawings & Interviews. At the beginning and end of the year, all students will be asked to develop drawings (e.g., Zangori & Forbes, 2016) in response to a question such as 'What is the relationship between energy, earth systems, and your school building?' At the end of each drawing exercise, we will perform clinical interviews with 4-6 students per classroom and interview the same students at the beginning and end of the year.Class Period Observations. Observational analysis will provide insight into how individual teachers enact the curriculum. We will aim to observe a minimum of one lesson per school per lesson plan.End-of-Lesson Assessments: Assessments of the individual lesson plans and a major assessment at the end of each unit will be built into the curriculum design and will additionally help with the evaluation of student outcomes.Teacher and Student Interviews. Teachers and students from each school will be interviewed immediately following each lesson plan to capture insights about student learning and logistical implementation of the lesson.Data analysis will involve both quantitative and qualitative methods. We will use qualitative analysis (Gall et al., 2003) for the student artifacts, interviews, and observations. We will quantitatively analyze the survey using multi-level modelling to examine differences over time and across classrooms.